


A Spare Room

by DestielsDestiny



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: 2x07, 5+1 Things, BAMF Magnus Bane, Background Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood, Episode Related, Family Feels, Father Figures, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Jace Wayland Feels, M/M, Magnus accidentally adopts a shadowhunter, POV Jace Wayland, POV Magnus Bane, Protective Magnus Bane, Supportive Magnus Bane, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-07
Updated: 2017-02-07
Packaged: 2018-09-22 16:12:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9615518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DestielsDestiny/pseuds/DestielsDestiny
Summary: Four times Magnus Bane realized he had inadvertently adopted a Shadowhunter, and the time Jace realized he’d been adopted by a Warlock.





	

Cooking Lessons

Jace has been staying at the loft for three days when Magnus is awoken out of a rather delicious dream featuring Alec’s lips, a feather, and a great deal of lace by the sounds of retching. 

His hand drifts towards the empty space on his right, reality reasserting itself as the retching gets louder, the distinct absence of Alec recalling the frustration of being thwarted from finally moving his seventeen thousandth and first relationship along by parabatai’s bearing pitifully small duffel bags. 

The retching has been going on long enough that Magnus heaves a resigned sigh, the urge to just stay in bed almost overwhelming because no Alec, thanks in large part to the person who had better not be destroying the redecorations to his second favourite bathroom. 

Magnus doesn’t bother to throw on a robe, his bare feet moving soundlessly over hard wood as the retching slowly dissipates the closer he gets. Magnus is familiar with the kind of upbringing that teaches the ability to suppress a gag reflex on cue, it is hardly uncommon in warlocks, where tragic backstories are more common than in super hero comics. 

The dual coloured eyes regarding him warily from under a fringe of matted blonde hair do nothing to dispel the illusion that he is looking at one of his own strays. 

Magnus never saw Jocelyn’s memories of her infant son, but he sometimes wonders if those eyes spooked her more than dead flowers ever could, the merest suggestion of a demon mark in something that is beautiful enough to be exotic even to Magnus’ ancient gaze. 

The overpowering stench of stomach acid tinged spaghetti assaults his nostrils as the passing thought flits away again, Jace slowly relaxing his grip on the bowl he was clutching as blue flames dance out from Magnus’ fingers, replacing the bowl with a glass of water. 

To his credit, Jace doesn’t so much as flinch. 

Magnus had shown Jace and his rather pitiful duffel to a spare room three days earlier, pausing only long enough to intone two things. “Don’t break anything Blondie” had seemed somewhat harsh with Alec in the next room, so he followed it up with a slightly mellower, “I don’t cook for others.” The except Alec practically had flames drawn around it in the air. Jace had grinned insolently and saluted him with a jaunty chuckle. 

Cue three days later, and apparently the only thing Jace knew how to cook was spaghetti. Frankly, Magnus had almost been sick from the repeated smell himself by now, but those damned eyes are back to watchful and wary before he can even think of making a joke. 

Magnus pulls a smile from somewhere, and whirls towards the door in a twirl of silk pants. 

“Waffles alright with you Blondie?” It takes a few minutes, but by the time Magnus is pulling pans out of cupboards, soft footfalls have followed him into the kitchen. 

Somehow, the lack of hesitancy in the step makes him grin. 

00

Box of memories

Luke places the box down on Magnus’ workbench with careful movements. Magnus barely spares it a glance, the pestle in his hand making a light grinding noise with every stroke. 

“You know, I’ve been thinking of getting a sign for my front door saying knocking is so last century.” His tone is conversational, but Luke proves predictably less than sympathetic. 

“You could start with locking it.” Magnus doesn’t deign that with a response, his gaze finally shifting to the triangular lid, the initials JC intricately displayed. 

“Why did you bring that here?” Personally, he would have preferred Luke bring him a live python. 

Luke watches Magnus watch the box. “Clary thought Jace might like to have it.”

Magnus doesn’t ask why his little Biscuit didn’t bring it by herself. He had unfortunately been present for the Morgenstern siblings’ argument several days prior, which had culminated in Clary screaming that Jace didn’t know what it was like to lose a parent. Jace had gone instantly stone faced, but Magnus was only halfway down the spiral stairs to suggest perhaps they take a breather when he rallied with the true but nonetheless painful “Well at least you got to have a parent worth losing.”

Magnus hadn’t asked Clary to leave, but he also hadn’t gone any further down the stairs. 

He hadn’t seen Jace since the clicking of his bedroom door coincided with Clary slamming Magnus’ front door. 

Luke’s hands slowly release the box, his steps carrying him deliberately backwards. Magnus slips it out before he can fully think it through. “Is he so much like his father?” 

The werewolf that was once Valentine Morgenstern’s parabatai didn’t turn from his break for the door. Magnus stepped around his workbench. “Isabelle told me about the other wolves, about the hunt.” Because that was what it had been. A hunt. With an outcome Luke was more than capable of predicting. 

Luke shifted to glance over his shoulder. “Jace can look after himself Magnus.” A glittery eyebrow raised carefully. 

“The blood stained into my floor when he finally got here would suggest otherwise.” Luke’s jaw tightened, but it was gone as soon as it appeared. 

Magnus sighs, lets the matter drop along with his hands. He turns towards the accursed box with its toxic memories. “I’ll see that Jace gets it.” Some century, he doesn’t add.  
Footsteps make it halfway to the door before pausing for a moment. “It’s not that he looks too much like his father.” Magnus holds his breath in surprise. 

Across the hall, a door slowly cracks open. Luke’s voice breaks on his next words. “It’s more that he doesn’t look enough like his father.” He strides from the loft swiftly, not a glance spared to the pale figure standing in the half open doorway, even as dual coloured eyes stare at him with something not unlike longing. 

Magnus follows Luke into the hall in time for the door to shut again with a definite click. 

He stores the box away in one of his many attics. He conveniently remembers to forget which one. 

00

Lasers burn

Jace rings the doorbell. He also bought the doorbell, a gag gift for Magnus’ possibly four-hundredth birthday, which Magnus secretly loves but nobody ever uses. 

It plays the Harry Potter theme on a continuous loop, so that neglect isn’t necessarily a bad thing in anyone’s opinion except Magnus’.

Jace rings the doorbell, the mission he and Alec were on days from being finished. Magnus tells himself it is that concern, that is it only for Alec that he practically strides to the door, that he yanks it open to find Jace leaning against the far wall, his face a mess of burns and blood. 

He still manages to grin somehow, his teeth an off red colour, blood flying from his mouth with each half-slurred word. “Aldertree sends his love.” A week earlier Magnus had refused to help the Institute track an expanding wolf-pack in the Bronx, the knowledge they took in orphaned kids outweighing the potential consequences. 

He doesn’t regret that decision, but the deja vu that settles in his stomach as a bit over a hundred pounds of too light shadowhunter folds into his arms is almost enough to make him sick. 

Noone touches his children and gets away with it. The thought almost makes Magnus drop Jace in surprise, but the boy chooses that moment to sigh contentedly against Magnus’ front, blood and burns and red teeth and all, and suddenly, his irrational declaration doesn’t seem that bad afterall. 

00

Golden Flames

Jace successfully summons his first ball of magic a year after he comes to live at the loft, on the night Magnus and Alec become engaged. 

Predictably enough, he does it in the living room, right beside the antique curtains, less than ten feet from where Magnus has just gone down on one knee before Alec, ring carefully clasped in both hands. Clary and Izzy are beginning to shriek happily, Raphael and Simon gathered around, smiling with different degrees of eagerness. Max is gripping Jace’s hand excitedly, and Alec is halfway through forming a yes, of course, yes, when golden flames shoot up into the air. 

Everyone but Magnus and Alec ducks, including Jace, who is staring at his left hand like it might bite him. 

Magnus watches dual eyes slowly come up to meet his own-for once unglamoured-ones, thinks about silent nooses in barns, about demon blood and dead flowers, about broken children and bruises that will never truly, fully heal, no matter how much magic he pours onto them. 

He lets his face crack into a smile, gathers the memories around himself, gathers that yes along with Alec into his arms, and holds out a hand wreathed in blue towards Jace’s dancing golden one. 

He lets himself mean what he says next. “Come along children, it looks like we have a great many things to celebrate.” And as a hesitant hand creeps into his, Alec pressed close to his side, laughter filling the air as the drapes continue to quietly smoulder, Magnus finds himself grinning like he hasn’t in centuries. 

“Now then,” he cries with a flourishing twirl, desserts spewing from his fingers like snowflakes. “Who wants cake?”

00

Pet names

Magnus Bane had pet names for the people he cared about. Intellectually, Jace had always known that. It takes him quite a while to make the connection though. 

Magnus starts calling him “my little shadowhunter” around his first Thanksgiving at the loft, Raphael and Simon fighting over the blood from the once raw turkey. Clary drops the wine, and Jace, reflexes faster than ever, catches it before it hits Magnus’ brocade rugs. 

It earns him a smile from the warlock, a look that might have been fond if it wasn’t ruined by the sarcastic, “Nice catch my little shadowhunter.” 

He’s been using it on and off for years before Jace finally gets it, finally distinguishes between a disparaging nickname and that peculiar form of endearing almost baby talk that is Magnus Bane for I love you, you are important to me, you are my family. 

It isn’t until he’s rapidly trying not to bleed to death on those same wine-stain free carpets, the same carpet he and Simon and Raphael had rolled around on like puppies trying to settle who got to be Magnus and Alec’s best man. Magnus had settled it by picking all three of them, but Jace still maintains he won that one. It isn’t until blue light licks warmly at his many wounds, a painted hand gripping the side of his bloody face, Magnus’ anguished eyes blinking in and out of focus, murmurs of “hush my little shadowhunter, be still my sunflower, everything’s going to be fine, I promise” that memories of a dying man with green skin and horns, of anguished pleas and ridiculous endearments finally come back to him. 

It isn’t until he’s lying on the floor of a loft he’s somehow never quite managed to bring himself to move out of, in the arms of a man who he’s never called anything but Magnus, and probably never will, that he finally realizes that this must be what having a parent who loves you feels like.


End file.
